In most redundant network elements a single network element is connected to redundant communications links. While this protects against communications link failures, the network element itself remains a single point of failure. If redundancy of the network element itself is desired, to guard against hardware failures, then both must be processing the same inputs or some other mechanism must be provided to synchronize the network elements. The former solution requires complete duplication of the communications links, which may not be practical or may be costly, the latter requires a special purpose communications link between the network elements and may require additional hardware and its associated cost.
The present invention facilitates the construction of redundant capable smart devices that can maintain operation in the presence of both device hardware and communications input link failures. This device eliminates the need for duplicate communications links, reduces the need for side channel network element communications channels to synchronize redundant network elements, and reduces the need for designing costly hardware synchronization methods into network elements that may not always be used in a redundant configuration.